Notts: Reduced Shakespeare Company prove they are the masters of comedy

John Smith

My first encounter with the Reduced Shakespeare Company, watching them shrink the Bard in Loughborough and it was just brilliant.

Since then, I have seen them tackle, the Bible, America and sports with similar mirth, if not the sheer genius of the original.

For their latest show, they are doing The Complete History of Comedy (abridged).

And at Lakeside Arts in Nottingham, I’m pleased to say they were on fine form.

From Gary Fannin’s madcap comedy medicine salesman, to Matt Pearson’s hilarious ‘turn for the worse’ during the silent film comedy sequence, to Andrew Hodges’ amusing video slideshows, the whole show was a madcap delight.

Cavemen telling jokes by hitting each other, Abraham Lincoln as a stand-up comedian, the Middle East crisis being solved by helium balloons and Hodges as the mystical clown Rambozo, 90 minutes fairly shot by.